


Nothing But Simple Pleasures

by hummerhouse



Category: Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Cartoon 2018)
Genre: Fun, Gen, Picnics, Swimming, Swimming Pools, time with friends and family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 07:28:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30018276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hummerhouse/pseuds/hummerhouse
Summary: Disclaimer: The TMNT are not mine. No money being made.Type: TMNT ROTTMNT, one shotRated: GSummary: April wants to give her best friends a day to remember, filled with the sort of fun they've never experienced.~ Written for the Together We Rise fanzine.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 22





	Nothing But Simple Pleasures

The door to April’s apartment stood partially open and music could be heard streaming from within. Raph held a finger to his lips, indicating that his brothers should remain quiet.

All four approached on tippy-toes and then stopped when Raph lifted a hand. He looked back at his brothers and nodded, receiving a nod from each of them in return.

Bolting forward, Raph slammed the door open, cracking the wall next to it. His brothers rushed into the apartment behind him, weapons drawn.

April stood next to her couch, in the midst of placing drinks into the cooler that was sitting there. She straightened up and stared at her friends before placing her hands on her hips.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

“We got your call and thought you needed to be rescued,” Raph said.

“The call where I told you to wear your swim trunks and meet me here for a day of fun?” April asked, brows lifted.

Don cleared his throat and lifted the bottom edges of his shorts. “These are not trunks; they are my board shorts.”

“We thought that was a coded message asking for help,” Mikey said.

April pointed at them. “Then why are you wearing your swim trunks?”

“Uh, we’re in disguise,” Leo said.

Don pushed past him. “Why was your door standing open? No one in this city leaves their door open.”

“I opened it so you wouldn’t break it down,” April replied in a clipped tone.

The brothers glanced back at the broken plaster and the cracks that now radiated across her living room wall. “Oops,” Mikey said. “Our bad.”

Sunita walked out of the kitchen and surveyed the scene before glancing at her friend. “So, are we ready to start our totally normal summer Sunday afternoon?”

“Yes we are,” April said. She pointed at the cooler. “Raph, we’re going up to the roof. Bring this along.”

“Sure, April,” Raph said, lifting the large cooler effortlessly.

“Why are we going to the roof?” Leo asked. “It’s like a billion degrees outside today.”

“You’ll see,” April said. “It’s a surprise.”

“I love surprises!” Mikey exclaimed as they followed April out of the apartment and to the stairs that lead to the roof of her building.

When they reached the access door, April used a key to unlock it. Throwing it wide, she exited onto the roof and stood aside.

The turtles and Sunita stepped out into the sunlight and blinked in astonishment as they looked around. A number of large plastic swimming pools sat together on the center of the roof, all filled with water.

There were several water hoses lying on the rooftop; one connected to a sprinkler, one connected to a long rainbow-colored sheet of plastic, and two others draped inside the pools. Deck chairs and large umbrellas providing shade for them sat near the tall ledge surrounded the roof’s edge.

April quickly turned on the main valve and water shot up from the sprinkler. The water also inflated the plastic sheet and cascaded over it to form a water tunnel.

Don walked over the stand at one end of the plastic sheet. Rubbing his chin, he said, “Hm, interesting. What does one call this and what does it do?”

“It’s a slip-‘n-slide, Donnie,” April answered. “You jump onto it and slide.”

“Quite. I see that you have placed it at a slight incline, which would seem to augment . . . .”

Leo walked up behind his brother and gave him a hard push, sending Don flying down the plastic slide. “Less talk, more sliding.” He backed up a few steps and then threw himself onto the plastic, skimming over the slide with a loud ‘whoop’.

Mikey was already dancing around beneath the spray of the sprinkler as Sunita watched. April moved over to join her friend.

Sunita glanced at her and then back at Mikey. “So in the summer, people play in the water?”

“Sure,” April said. “Water cools us off and it’s fun. You’ve never been swimming?”

Shaking her head, Sunita said, “We don’t even take baths. We don’t need to.”

April looked startled, a thought suddenly hitting her. “You don’t . . . melt in water, do you?”

“Psh, no,” Sunita said with a wave of her hand. She shrugged. “When you spend most of your time in a gelatinous state, you don’t really think much about lolling around in water.”

“Do you want to do something else?” April asked.

The sounds of Leo and Don laughing and taunting one another as they slid through the water joined with the joyous excitement in Mikey’s voice and the slurping noises Raph made as he sucked down a soda.

“And miss all this fun?” Sunita responded with a bright smile. “Never.”

As if to prove her point, she darted forward to join Mikey in dancing under the water spraying up from the sprinkler. April noticed Raph eyeing the pools and walked over to him.

“The biggest one is for you,” April told him. “It’s made of really hard plastic so you can lean back against the sides.”

“Really?” Raph said.

“Give it a try, big guy,” April said encouragingly, unintentionally rhyming.

Those words had barely left her mouth when Raph launched himself skyward and curled into a ball just before hitting the water. The accompanying tidal wave splattered everywhere and soaked April in the process.

Raph got up on his knees in the pool, which now had only a few small puddles in its bottom. “I, uh, that might not have been a good idea.”

April was laughing as she grabbed a loose hose and began refilling the pool. “Don’t worry about it, Raph. I got your back.”

Feeling impish, she turned the hose on him, splashing him full in the face. Spluttering, Raph began batting the water back at her, his large hands turning the water contest into a fair fight.

When Mikey saw that they were having a water fight, he snatched up the sprinkler and began chasing Sunita with it. Laughing she ran from him before tapping her cloaking broach in order to change into her slime-based form. Then she stopped running, flattening and elongating her body into a curve. When the water hit her, it bounced off and back onto Mikey.

Sliding down the plastic sheet, Don’s eyes landed on a purple colored water chair sitting next to one of the pools. He bounded off of the slide to grab the chair, tossing it into a pool and then leaping onto it. As soon as he was settled, he pulled out his cell phone and began scrolling.

A second later water hit him full in the face. Looking up, he saw that Leo was in the pool next to his.

“Nope, uh, uh,” Leo said. “Put the phone away.”

Don glared at him. “For your information, Leon, April called us here for a day of fun.” He waggled his phone. “To me, this is fun.”

Another spray of water hit him. Wearing a roguish grin, Leo’s expression clearly dared his brother to retaliate.

Whipping out his tech bō, Don pressed a button and a large propeller popped open on one end. Touching it to the pool’s surface sent jets of water spattering into Leo’s face.

Despite the water play, Raph’s pool had finally filled enough so that he could lounge against its side with water up to his chin. April set the hose down and picked up a handful of floating tub toys to set in the pool. One of those was a rubber duck, which she tossed directly to Raph.

Eyes lighting up, Raph caught the rubber duck and set it on the water in front of him. “Aw, aren’t you cute?”

Mikey leaned over the edge of the pool and waited as the other toys floated towards him before catching hold of a rubber whale. As he dipped it in and out of the water, a thought struck him.

“Where’s Mayhem?” Mikey asked.

April was using a towel to dry off her glasses and paused to answer. “You know Mayhem doesn’t like water. I think he’s under my bed.”

“Too bad, I think he would have liked this,” Mikey said, walking over to the slip ‘n slide. Running forward, he dove atop the plastic sheet and shouted “Whee!” as he skimmed over the water, holding the little whale out in front of him.

Sunita had returned to her cloaked form and was lounging on one of the deck chairs. After April grabbed a couple of drinks from the cooler, she went over to join her friend.

“Thank you,” Sunita said when April handed her a soda. She was watching the turtles and smiling at their antics. “I’m guessing they’ve never done this kind of thing before either.”

Settling onto a chair, April popped the top on her can and took a long drink before answering. “Nope. Not out in the sun anyway. We have a lot of night adventures, but that’s not the same.”

Sunita glanced up at the sun and sighed. “I know how they feel. The Hidden City can be fun, but it’s different out here.”

They talked for a while, the sounds of the turtles energetic water hijinks entertaining them. When April leaned forward to announce that there were sandwiches in the cooler, all four of the brothers made a mad dash for it, squabbling and shoving each other.

Leaning towards Sunita and keeping her voice low, April said, “There are more sandwiches in the kitchen if you get hungry. I kind of doubt they’ll leave us anything.”

She followed that statement with a wink and the two friends started laughing. A minute later a shadow fell across them and they looked up to see Mikey, who was shoving the tail end of a submarine sandwich into his mouth.

“Wha’s so ‘unny?” Mikey asked, crumbs spraying in all directions.

“Just, um, sharing a story about the first time my dad exploded all over my Grand-Googly,” Sunita answered, thinking quickly.

Leo strolled over and rested his arm on top of Mikey’s head. “Ah, Exploding Frankie. That never gets old.”

A spray of water hit him in the face, throwing him backwards. “Water hose jitsu!” Donnie yelled, chasing after his brother.

Raphael had returned to his pool and pulled all of the floating toys close to him. In a falsetto voice, he intoned, “And then little duck swims up to whale and says ‘you are so very fast’ and whale . . . .”

“Hey, that’s my whale!” Mikey exclaimed, spinning around and hopping into the pool. “I’ll be whale, you be duck.”

The scene made April smile. Her friends could be world-saving ninjas one minute, and youthful guys enjoying simple pleasures the next.

Donnie raced past her, jets of water hitting the back of his head. Somehow Leo had gotten the hose from him and turned the tables so that he was now the aggressor.

“Oh, ho, ho! Take that!”

“We should totally tape a hose to the skateboard ramp at home,” Mikey said. “Don’t you think we should add a water feature to our skate routine, Donnie?”

“No I do not, Michael,” Donnie answered as he came skidding to a stop before sticking his foot out to trip Leo. “It would flood the lair.”

Leo popped up from the ground and draped himself over the edge of the pool. “The water would drain off,” he said, shoving a toy boat towards Mikey, “eventually.”

“Pops probably wouldn’t like it,” Raph told them.

“We should definitely get some of these,” Leo said, waving a toy goldfish at his brothers. “That would make it much easier to get Miguel to take a bath.”

“Hey! I take baths,” Mikey protested. “Here D, take the boat.”

Donatello accepted the toy boat from his brother and lazily pushed it around in the water while tapping away on his phone. Mikey filled a toy walrus with water and set it on the boat, weighing it down so it was partially submerged.

“Oh dear, you have sunk my boat,” Donnie said in a deadpan voice, his gaze focused on the phone.

A thin stream of water hit him right in the eye. Sputtering, he glared at Leo, who was holding a squirting goldfish. Don immediately reached for his bō, only to have his hand stayed by his big brother.

“Nope, no more tech,” Raph said firmly. “Put the phone away.”

Don made a face at him, but obediently tucked the phone out of sight. Returning to the pool where the water chair floated, he jumped onto it. Getting comfortable, he looked up at the puffy clouds overhead and then grinned.

Pointing at one of them, he said, “That looks like Master Splinter.”

His brothers and the two girls turned their attention skyward. In a moment they were all picking shapes out of the clouds.

When it started to turn dark, April took out her phone and announced, “I’m ordering pizza. Mrs. Camp gave me a handful of free pizza coupons for babysitting Earl. That kid’s a challenge. What does everyone want?”

The turtles all began shouting their pizza preferences to her at the same time, stopping only when she held up a hand. “One at a time, please.”

She finally got the orders placed and then she and Sunita went down to April’s apartment to wait for the delivery. When they carried the boxes back up to the roof, they found Leo waiting for them. He immediately tossed each of his brothers’ boxes to them like frisbees and then took his own before joining them on the roof’s ledge.

“What are we looking at?” April asked as she and Sunita climbed up to sit beside the turtles.

“Meteor shower,” Don answered, fingers skimming over his wrist computer. “The first one should appear in seventeen point three seconds.”

The brothers had consumed their pizzas by the time the first meteor zipped across the night sky. They ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ at each appearance, excitedly pointing the meteors out to each other.

Sunita leaned towards April and in a quiet voice said, “This has been one of the best days and nights I’ve ever had and we didn’t even go anywhere.”

Smiling, April said, “When your best friends are like family, you don’t need anything but their company. It’s all about the simple pleasures.”

Mikey slipped an arm over April’s shoulder and then slung one across Leo’s, who was seated on his other side. “You are so right about that.”

End


End file.
